A Numbers Game (Mal & Jackie Book 1)

by RJ Dark

He nodded.

  ‘I’ve got our gear in the Ka.’

  ‘Our gear?’

  ‘Breaking and entering stuff, from the church.’

  ‘You think we should break into the building firm?’

  ‘It’s a start.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Do you really need me?’

  ‘I won’t know if what I find is important. You will.’ Then he stood and headed for the doors. ‘Come on, Mal. Work to do.’

  He didn’t wait for me to agree, never did. That wasn’t Jackie’s way. So, I hurried after him to the Ka and we headed out into the night.

  The wrong way.

  ‘Where are we going, Jackie? The building firm is in the city – we’re heading toward the Edge.’

  ‘Always collect intel before you hit a target, Mal.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘We’re off to see Shaky Glen.’

  ‘Oh no, not Ciderman, not now. I can’t …’

  ‘Put your seat belt on, Mal.’

  I sat back, wanting to argue but knowing it wasn’t worthwhile. Shaky Glen was one of the more famous figures on the Edge. His heyday had been in the mid-eighties; big fan of hair metal and acid. He used to be a maths teacher at the school, and when he wasn’t teaching was a regular in the metal clubs and one of the biggest dealers on the estate. Not a serious dealer, nothing hard: speed, acid and dope were Glen’s trade. And one day he went a bit too far into his stash of acid and he never really came back. Lost his job. Lost all sense of time and never managed to escape 1987. I mean, he was old now, sixties at least, but he didn’t seem to know that.

  ‘I’m not going into his house, Jackie.’

  ‘Yeah you are,’ he said, as we drew up outside Glen’s council house. It had been nice once; a teacher’s salary and his extracurricular activities had meant he could afford the best of everything. He probably owned the house, otherwise I was pretty sure the council would have moved him into one of the tower blocks in the centre of the estate – the same ones they were currently demolishing. He lived on one of the nicer bits of the Edge, among the carefully looked-after gardens, and he shared a hedge with a neighbour. His neighbour cut their side. Glen’s side looked like it had been enthusiastically backcombed, which I suppose was very on-brand for him.

  Jackie got out the car and waited for me to join him. I tried sitting there and sighing as theatrically as possible to show my displeasure, but he didn’t seem to care. So, I got out, and we walked toward Glen’s front door.

  In the garden, was a skip. There had always been a skip in Shaky Glen’s front garden but no one knew what was in it cos you would have had to fight through the forest of brambles surrounding it. I only knew it was there from memories of seeing it. During the day, if you squinted, you could see hints of rusted yellow metal. At night, it looked like a mound of vegetation ready to come alive at any moment and entomb you. The only way to the door was up a single well-used path through more brambles; Jackie danced down the path to avoid getting his coat – a bizarre Adidas knock-off with Adidot stencilled in purple on white neoprene – snagged on any of the thorns. I wasn’t as bothered and leather is harder wearing so I put my hands into my coat pockets and pushed on through, feeling the tentative pulls of the vines on my jacket as Jackie hammered on the door.

  ‘Glen!’ Bangbangbang. ‘Glen! open up!’

  There was a pause. A light went on in the front room that illuminated the filthy sheets hung up instead of curtains. It looked like they had Moomins on them.

  ‘Glen’s not here,’ said a tremulous voice from behind the door. Glen’s tremulous voice.

  ‘It’s Jackie, Glen,’ said Jackie. ‘Let us in.’

  ‘I’m not here.’

  ‘You are here, you are talking to me.’

  A pause.

  ‘This is someone else.’

  ‘Glen, I will break this fucking door down if you don’t open it.’

  A pause. The sound of chains being taken off the door and the key scratching in a lock that needed oil. The door inched open.

  ‘You only needed to say it was you, Jackie.’

  ‘I did say,’ he began, but Glen was already heading into his house.

  ‘You didn’t say we’d have to go in,’ I hissed. ‘I’ll wait here.’ Jackie took me by the arm and pulled me into Glen’s house. The smell was like a wall.

  ‘Fuck me, Mohammed, the Guru, Jesus and all his saints,’ said Jackie. ‘What is that stink?’

  ‘I’m making dinner, Jackie,’ said Glen from a side room.

  ‘Smells like you’re cooking a cat that’s been dead for a month.’

  ‘It’s mince,’ he said. He appeared round the door. He was a very thin man. I didn’t know if he backcombed his hair now or just never washed it, but the effect was the same: a jagged thatch of brown wisps. He was wearing spandex trousers that left far too little to the imagination and a purple shirt that was open to his navel. Unlike Jackie, he didn’t have the musculature to pull it off, or any musculature, in fact. He tried a hesitant smile; he had surprisingly good teeth. ‘Do you want some mince?’

  ‘I’d rather die,’ said Jackie.

  ‘It’s got onions in it,’ said Glen.

  ‘I would still rather die.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. The way Glen walked always reminded me of a Thunderbirds puppet; he kept his hands slightly out in front of him, his knees bent. The only thing that stopped the image being complete was his constant shaking. The face beneath his hair was lined, and the lines were grimy with dirt. I’d never been this close to Glen before, not sober anyway, and I wondered how I had managed to miss that what I thought was hair, was actually a cheap wig.

  There wasn’t a kid on the estate that didn’t know Shaky Glen, or that hadn’t catcalled and ridiculed him as he walked about, but he seemed impervious to the ridicule, or maybe oblivious to it.

  The house was cold even though it was warm outside and, despite the lights being on, it was dark too. Glen kept things. Newspapers, boxes, toys. He was also a professional lifter; he’d steal from the shops and sell it at the pubs or car-boot sales. Whatever he didn’t sell at the car-boot, joined the stockpile of rubbish in his house. It didn’t seem to bother him. He led us through into his front room. There was one chair in front of an electric fire, and by it was a small table with an ashtray and a rolling machine. Glen sat down and started trying to roll a cigarette, but the shaking of his hands meant he kept dropping the tobacco back into the little tin in his lap. He didn’t seem frustrated by it, probably just normal for him: pick up the paper. Pick up the tobacco. Grin. Drop the tobacco in the paper. Drop the tobacco from the paper into the tin. Look confused. Grin. Repeat. I wondered why he wasn’t using the rolling machine, maybe he’d forgotten he had it.

  Jackie took the tin and papers from Shaky Glen and neatly rolled him a cigarette one-handed, then passed it to Glen. He had to wait a moment as Glen had made a can of cider appear from somewhere and was taking a long drink. When he finished, he balanced the can on the pile of old cigarette butts in the ashtray and took the cigarette from Jackie and lit it.

  ‘I need some information, Glen,’ said Jackie. He took another paper and some tobacco and started to roll another cigarette. Glen stared into the middle distance. ‘Who stabbed Alan, Mick’s lad?’

  Glen turned to him. ‘Were it you?’

  ‘Would I be asking if it was me?’

  ‘I heard it were you though.’

  ‘It wasn’t, so who else might it be?’

  ‘Do you want to buy some sanitary towels?

  ‘No, I want to know who stabbed Mick’s boy.’

  ‘I’ve got twenty boxes,’ he said. ‘Good ones, the ones with the song, you know, off the telly.’ He didn’t seem to have a TV.

  ‘How do you shoplift twenty boxes of sanitary towels?’ I said.

  Glen turned to me, the thin rolled-up cigarette held between fingers stained with decades worth of nicotine. ‘I wear a big coat,’
he said. Something danced behind his blue eyes and I wondered if maybe he wasn’t quite as far gone as he liked to pretend.

  ‘How much are they?’ said Jackie. Two cigarettes were now in the bottom of the tobacco tin and Jackie rolled a third.

  ‘Quid a box.’

  ‘I’ll buy them all. Now, Mick’s lad, who did it?’ Another cigarette rolled.

  ‘I need the money first, Jackie.’

  ‘What do you need money for?’ I said, ‘You shoplift everything you need.’

  ‘I want to buy a ticket to see Def Leppard,’ he said.

  ‘Are they still going?’ said Jackie.

  Glen nodded slowly. Ash fell from the fag in his hand.

  ‘Aye, drummer’s only got one arm, you know. You should come with me, Jackie, you’d like ‘em.’

  ‘Not my thing, Glen,’ he said, and rolled another cigarette.

  ‘Singer’s a Pakistani like you,’ said Glen.

  Jackie looked at me.

  I shook my head and mouthed, ‘No, he isn’t.’

  Jackie mouthed back, ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘Mick’s lad, Glen. Stop changing the subject.’

  Glen scratched at the rat’s nest of a wig on his head.

  ‘Mick thinks it’s the Russians, right, but they say it weren’t them. That’s why I thought it were you, like.’ He spoke slowly, as if every word required a lot of thought. ‘Some of Mick’s boys have been torching Russian takeaways – gonna be a lot more of that tonight,’ he said. He took a drag on the cigarette, but there was nothing left of it. He didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Really?’ said Jackie, rolling another cigarette.

  ‘Oh, aye, specially cos Mick’s in jail, so he can say it weren’t him, right?’

  ‘Do the Russians know Mick’s torching their shops?’ said Jackie.

  Glen shrugged. ‘Some were here, they bought the last of me bacon, it’s always a good seller, bacon.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning. I thought it were you doing the stabbing, sorry, Jackie.’

  ‘It’s alright Glen,’ he said, and he took a twenty-pound note from his coat and gave it to him along with the tobacco tin full of neatly rolled cigarettes. Glen stared at him as if he was puzzled by the money and the tin. ‘Enjoy Def Leppard, Glen.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, and took another drag on the dead cigarette.

  We headed out toward the city with twenty boxes of sanitary towels, and I asked Jackie what he would do with them.

  ‘Schools, homeless shelters, they always need them.’

  ‘Are you worried someone might hurt Glen, for telling us stuff?’

  Jackie shook his head. ‘You don’t visit Glen if you want it kept secret, everyone knows that.’ He brought the Ka to a stop at a red light. ‘There are rules, Mal, you have to obey the rules.’

  18

  The Maylin and Sparrow building was quiet, as it should be at 2 a.m. The glass front glowed with a warm light. Behind it the desk was empty; not even a night security guard.

  ‘How do we know that there won’t be a load of Russians inside waiting for us?’ I said. Jackie stared at me.

  ‘Cos Glen told us Mick’s people are going to make a run at the Russians’ businesses tonight.’

  ‘He’s hardly the most reliable source.’

  ‘If Glen knows’ – Jackie turned in his seat, pushing aside boxes of sanitary towels, and finding a rucksack – ‘then everyone knows.’

  ‘How do we get in?’

  ‘The church.’

  ‘The church?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Come on.’

  ‘This is the second church we’ve broken into in two days.’

  Jackie shrugged. ‘You don’t believe in God.’

  ‘Yeah but …’

  ‘We’re not breaking in, and anyway, it’s been deconsecrated. Stop whining.’

  I’d known this church forever. When I’d gone to the venue down the road, it had been derelict. And it was still derelict. Every so often a for-sale sign would go up on it, and then it would say sold, and then a new lock would appear on the chain that kept the doors shut and nothing would happen. Jackie had a key to the lock. Of course he did.

  ‘You own this, Jackie?’

  He shrugged. ‘A friend does.’

  ‘A friend who gives you the key?’

  ‘A friend who owes me a favour.’

  We slipped in. It smelled like an old church – old wood, some of it damp – and like Glen’s house, it was much colder inside than the air was outside. Jackie flicked on a torch and cast the light about. I caught glimpses, saw a building that looked like it had remained the same ever since it had been built: lines of pews facing the front, a lectern in the shape of a large bronze eagle which stared out angrily into the disused church. To one side I saw a door; a much newer looking door than in the rest of the building. I headed towards it.

  ‘Where you going?’ said Jackie.

  ‘I saw a door …’

  ‘Don’t worry about the door. Follow me.’ He led me through the pews, past the angry eagle, then to the right. Behind a buttress was a very thin door with a very big lock. Jackie had a key for this one too, and behind the door was a steep set of stone stairs leading down into a basement that smelled strongly of disinfectant. Thick pipes ran along the floor and warmed the air. I could hear something that sounded like a boiler.

  ‘Someone is using this place—’

  Jackie’s finger was on my mouth.

  ‘I said don’t worry about it – okay? Just follow me.’

  We went down the corridor and into what was very obviously a boiler room; the boiler was clearly new. Along one side were racks of electricity meters and, in a wire cage, not locked, was what looked like a cleaner’s supply cupboard. On the same wall with the meters was another new door, all the stone work around it had been done recently. Recently in the life of the church anyway – maybe not in the last decade.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jackie. He walked into the supply area and pulled a set of overalls off a shelf and threw them at me, then got another pair and started putting them on over his clothes.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Heating, meters and utilities for the building next door, cheaper for them to have this on a long-term lease and rent out their basement as more offices than to lose the space for machinery. That door’ – he pointed at the new looking door – ‘leads right into The Loom, and as long as we’re dressed like cleaners and taking round a rubbish cart, then no one will ask questions.’ He finished getting into his overalls then went over to a fuse box on the wall. He opened it and counted along the trip switches. ‘Five and six and seven and eight.’ He flipped them. I expected something to happen, like in a film, for all the lights to go out or for there to be a dramatic hum that slowly vanished. Nothing happened.

  ‘Did you turn off the security system?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And have the security firm running straight round? No, I turned off the lifts and the cameras in the shared areas. They will send someone to see to it eventually, but as long as the alarm on the doors hasn’t been tripped, they won’t treat it as an emergency.’

  ‘Did you put that system in?’

  He grinned at me and then went through the door, pushing the rubbish cart ahead of him, using one hand to steer it.

  ‘So, can we just walk into Maylin and Sparrow?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Nah, each business organises its own cleaning staff. That’s why I brought this.’ He tapped the rucksack on his shoulder. ‘Shall we get on then?’ He led me through the building. There’s something mournful about an office building at night. Without the busy to and fro of people, the building dozes, and I felt unwelcome, like we were disturbing its sleep.

  We had to carry our cleaning cart up the stairs as Jackie had put the Yellowvater out of action.

  ‘Why did you switch off the lifts?’

  ‘Gives us more time if anyone turns up
.’

  ‘My legs ache.’ There were a lot of stairs. ‘And my arms ache.’ The cart was heavy.

  ‘You need to get more exercise, soft lad.’

  We stopped at the door of Maylin and Sparrow, and Jackie put his rucksack on the floor. He took out his all purpose skeleton key, or crowbar and then stopped on the point of breaking open the door.

  ‘Are you still good with a lock pick?’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘Then have a go at this.’ He pointed at the door. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard, and it’s less likely to leave signs of us having been here.’

  I knelt by the door. I’d taught myself lock-picking when I was an addict, telling myself it was somehow more genteel and less harrowing for the people whose homes I burgled if I didn’t smash down the doors. Lying to myself about the pain I caused.

  But at least it left me with a useful skill.

  The lock was a simple Yale, and as the lock gave, I stood, put my hand to the doorknob to push it open. Jackie grabbed my arm.

  ‘What?’

  He held out a balaclava and a pair of latex gloves. As I put them on he put on his own, then wiped the door handle with a cloth from his bucket and gave me a grin, white teeth against the black material, and wandered into the office. I followed.

  Inside, it was simply lit, small lights in the ceiling twilit the room, and at the end of it, beyond the window, the city stretched out, veins of light, the red glow of the rear lights on cars corpuscles moving through it. Within the roads, the lights of businesses and homes, the nerves of the city, and beyond that was darkness; the city seemed to float in a lake of it – though I knew that was only the moors that edged up to the suburbs, as black as the night, cut by the odd moving light of a car, a lonely glow-worm lost in the shadow.

  Jackie went forward a few steps, still pushing his rubbish cart, and then paused, held up a hand to tell me to stop and pointed upwards. A light blinked on a camera and Jackie hugged the wall, flattening his body against it and waving at me to do the same. Then he inched under the camera. Held up his hand again for me to stay where I was before he moved further into the room and down the long bank of desks, behind which was a glassed-in office, contents hidden from view by closed blinds and a blue door. Jackie stopped at the centre of the bank of desks. He leant over and dipped into the rucksack again, taking out a black box, flicking a switch and placing it as near to the centre of the desks as he could. Then he stepped back.